Kanye West Shuts Down Coinye West Online Currency

Kanye West is always talking about how brilliant he is. But what's really brilliant is Coinye West, a new version of online currency that was due to launch this week. However, their clever name caused Yeezy to block their plans, due to trademark infringement claims.

The online group, comprised of seven people, was set to launch the digital currency on Thursday, Jan. 9. But West's legal eagles filed a cease-and-desist order, since the coins boasted a graphic that looked like cartoon image of Yeezy, and he wasn't having any of it.

The legal papers claimed: "Given Mr. West’s wide-ranging entrepreneurial accomplishments, consumers are likely to mistakenly believe that Mr. West is the source of your services."

They have a point, there.

Using the name Coinye and 'Ye's likeness might cause users to go, "Wow, this is brilliant and since Kanye is such a genius, he has to be involved."

The Coinye West creators played nice, swapping out the name of the currency to simply "Coinye." They also changed the graphic and their domain name yesterday, Jan. 7, two days prior to their planned launch.

That's probably for the best, since if they did launch as is, they'd have a whole lot of legal headaches and changes to contend with while already in the marketplace.

Now if Kanye West was a brilliant as he says, shouldn't he have thought of Coinye West and the whole concept of cryptocurrency first? Just sayin'. We love his music and his fashion exploits are pretty bangin', too. It just loses effect when he keeps telling us how awesome he is.